The unemployment rate will continue to rise, leading to a further 100,000 people out of work before September, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank.

With public sector job cuts continuing to bite, IPPR’s research predicts it could be 18 months before the unemployment rate starts to fall. The areas most likely to be hit by the job losses include London, the North-west and Eastern England, Yorkshire and Humberside.

Worryingly, the left-leaning think tank predicts that the UK jobs market will see a rise of 40,000 people under the age of 25 unemployed before the end of the summer.

Kayte Lawton, senior research fellow at IPPR told the BBC: “The personal tragedy of the slow economic recovery is the way unemployment will continue to rise over the next year, even once the economy begins to grow.

“This has been the longest recession and the slowest recovery that Britain has ever experienced.

“The risk is that high unemployment becomes a permanent feature of the UK economy, as it did in the 1980s.”